The Hollow Queen's footsteps made no sound, yet the very trees recoiled from her. The sanctuary grove dimmed—not from smoke, but from the *absence* of light. Her presence gnawed at the edges of reality, like rot beneath a wound that hadn't healed.
Elara held the Heart close, its glow flickering, uncertain. Rin had stepped in front of her, blades drawn, jaw set. Sira, ever the shield, flanked his side, eyes narrowed to slits.
Only the Ashbringer—Kael—remained still, his mask now gone, his face hidden in shadows cast by his own fire.
"You were warned," the Hollow Queen said, her voice soft and poisonous. "You were told what would happen if you let the light remember you."
Kael raised his head. "I remember myself now. That's enough."
She sneered. "Then you remember *what you owe me.*"
Vines of black thorn burst from the soil, snapping toward him like whips. He moved before they struck—raising his hand in a smooth, old motion. A flare of blue flame burst upward, cutting through the vines and turning them to ash mid-air.
"She's tied to him," Rin murmured. "She's feeding off what he was."
"Or what he *lost*," Sira added grimly.
Elara could feel the Heart thudding faster in her hands, syncing not with her own pulse—but with *Kael's.*
The Hollow Queen's eyes fell on her next.
"You've always been the vessel," she said. "The Heart doesn't choose. It *uses.* Just like the Keepers used Kael. Just like they used me."
Elara took a step forward despite the pain blooming in her chest.
"No," she said firmly. "You chose to let the dark rewrite you. The Heart remembers everything—and it shows you the choice."
The Queen's face twisted. "You think memory is salvation?"
Behind her, the air *split.*
A tear in the world, jagged and raw, formed like a wound in the sky above the grove.
From within: *Elsewhere.*
It churned. Screamed without sound. Endless stars spun wrong, seas flowed upward, and cities floated in silence.
Elara's knees buckled under the pressure of that vision—but she did not let go of the Heart.
Then Kael stepped forward.
"The gate is opening again," he said. "And you've come to finish what we stopped."
"I came," the Hollow Queen replied, "to break the seal *you* left unfinished."
She raised both hands—and the trees ignited in black fire.
The protective stone ring flared once, groaned like something ancient breaking, and cracked in three places.
The sanctuary was failing.
Rin lunged at the Queen—Sira close behind—but vines lashed from the shadows, hurling them backward.
Only Elara remained standing. The Heart burned white-hot now, so bright it bled into the air like mist.
The Queen turned toward her, voice low and cruel.
"Give it to me. You *can't* contain it. You *won't* survive it."
Elara looked down at the Heart—and saw something new. A *mark* forming on its surface.
A moth. Wings outstretched.
The symbol of the original Keepers of Elsewhere.
She closed her fingers around it, and for a moment—time *stopped.*
Every leaf frozen mid-air. Every shadow suspended. The Queen unmoving. Kael caught in mid-step, flame frozen like glass.
Only Elara could move.
And then, from behind her—*a voice.*
Not the Heart's.
Her mother's.
> "You don't stop darkness by running. You stop it by remembering the light you carried through it."
The moth sigil blazed.
And the Heart, for the first time, *opened.